The Fire-Dwellers (3 page)

  — If Mac knew, he would think I was unbalanced. He never hits the kids in anger. No, maybe not, but that icy calm of his is worse. Okay, so I’m trying to justify myself. Earlier, I was worried sick in case that kid was one of mine. Now, look. Why? What if I hit one of them too hard sometime, without meaning to? Am I a monster? They nourish me and yet they devour me, too. God, how can I make all this better as if it hadn’t happened? No answer. No illumination from on high. As if I expected any. If I could only talk about it. But who wants to know, and anyway, could I say? I can’t forget that piece in the paper. Young mother killed her two-month-old infant by smothering it. I wondered how that sort of thing could ever happen. But maybe it was only that the baby was crying and crying, and she didn’t know what to do, and was maybe frantic about other things entirely, and suddenly she found she had stopped the noise. I cannot think this way. I must not.

Stacey pours herself a massive gin and tonic, and gets dinner. Mac is away on the road and will not be home until late tonight. The kids eat, do homework, look at TV. At eleven, even Katie is stashed away in bed and Stacey is off duty. She takes the current glass of gin and tonic up to the bedroom. She locks the door, temporarily, in case a kid wakens, strips and looks at herself in the full-length mirror.

She actually believed it was vanity, Mother did.
It’s not how you look, it’s what you are that counts
, she used to say – admirably, I guess, but brother, that was one of the finest lies anyone ever spun me. Do I know that little about Katie now? That old album – and when I saw a snapshot of myself, years ago, I thought
My heavens. I was actually pretty – why didn’t I know it then?

Stacey drinks the gin and tonic slowly, trying to make it last. She brushes her hair and makes up her face and puts on perfume. Then she looks in the mirror again. No change.

  — Oh Cleopatra. You old swayback. Four kids have altered me. The stretch marks look like little silver worms in parallel processions across my belly and thighs. My breasts aren’t bad, and at least my ankles aren’t thick. Mac said once he liked the color of my eyes, greenish-grey. But there used to be a slight hollow on the side of my buttocks, a little concave place that showed when I wore a tight skirt, and he liked that, too, and it isn’t there any more. Filled in with the slow accumulation of flesh. Not flesh. Fat. F.A.T. I can make the hollow be there again momentarily if I tense my muscles. But who is going to
go through life remembering to hold their tight muscles in, just so they’ll have an attractive ass?

Stacey slops on some more perfume. The gin is gone. She puts on her housecoat and tiptoes downstairs to refill the glass. She returns, sits on the bedroom chair, smoking, no longer looking in the mirror.

  — Why doesn’t he get home? I want him. Right now, this minute. No, I don’t. I want some other man, someone I’ve never been with. Only Mac for sixteen years. What are other men like? It’s just as bad for him, maybe worse. He looks at the girls on the street, all the young secretaries stepping lightly, the slim fillies of all the summers, and his face grows inheld and bitter. I want to comfort him, but can’t, any more than he can comfort me, for neither of us is supposed to feel this way. Except that I know he does. I wonder if he knows I do? Sometimes I think I’d like to hold an entire army between my legs. I think of all the men I’ll never make love with, and I regret it as though it were the approach of my own death. I’m not monogamous by nature. And yet I am. I can’t imagine myself as anyone else’s woman, for keeps. What does Mac do when he’s on the road? He doesn’t sell vanilla essence every evening, that’s for sure. God, I’m unfair. Are the small-town whores so glamorous? And anyway, it’s only my conditioned reflex. I don’t worry that much, whatever he does out there. It doesn’t seem all that earth-shattering. It’s jealousy, baby, admit it. He can and you can’t. So okay. But apart from that angle, I’d like to be on the road. Not for anything but just to be going somewhere.

Mac on the road, soaring along as though the old Chev were a winged chariot, through the mountains and the turquoise air, into the valley where the rivers run with names like silkenly flowing water, Similkameen, Tulameen, Coquihalla, the names on
maps, clear brown water over the shifting green stones, where the pine and tamarack and the thin spruce trees stand a little way off, blue-green and black-green needles dry in the dry gold air, where the tall barbed grasses are never touched or cut but remain eternally high with their pale seedheads like oats bent in the light wind that blows always, where it is sun all the way in the fields of purple fireweed where only the bees make their furred music
.

Stacey knows it is not like that for him. He does door-to-door. Nights, it is motels on the fringes of towns, gaudy dusty shacks with names like Rainbow and Riverview and small neon signs announcing
Eats
and
Vacancy
, where drowsy Alsatian dogs sprawl on the gravel driveways and the proprietor’s kids throw stones at one another, and the cars rocket past –
ching! ching! ching! –
like a roaring clock recording the minutes, and the rooms are scantily clad in imitation furniture, the table covered with burn scars and wet beer bottle circles, the floor buckling linoleum, and the shower that dribbles lukewarm water unpredictably. Days, and it is all doors, knocking and waiting, and flint-faced females who imagine their unappetizing virtue to be in peril, so
slam
.

  — He never talks of it. He won’t. He refuses. Last week a man knocked at my door, a young man with amber eyes pale and circular behind magnifying glasses. He held out a pamphlet in half-apologetic offering.
Safety in Time of War
. Ragged crimson letters like rising flames. I did a double take and saw the smaller letters underneath.
God’s War of the Last Day
. Oh, that war. He was a Redeemer’s Advocate. I nearly closed the door quickly. But then I didn’t. He was in the living room for an hour and a half and I thought he’d never go. It can’t be good, to have a door slammed in your face.

Drabble’s, as well as being a purveyor of vanilla, lemon and orange essence, peppermint and raspberry extract and
maple-type flavoring, also handles a wide selection of sprays – Forest Petal House Freshener, Silk Brocade Hair Spray, Pink Cross Athlete’s Foot Spray, Angel-Breath Mouth Freshener, Honey Blossom Garbage Tin Spray, and others. Mac has been doing the circuit for Drabble’s for seven years. He took it on immediately after he stopped selling encyclopedias.

  — He was doing okay, in encyclopedias. He never lost his job. He quit. He kicked himself for it afterwards. Listen, Mac, you did right. He’s never mentioned it since, but I’ve never forgotten the night he told me what happened.

  — At that precise moment, didn’t I have to go and get pregnant? I shouldn’t have. It was my fault. We were both a little stoned the night it happened. I thought I’d put the damn equipment in, but next morning there it was on the floor beside the bed. After I was certain, Mac didn’t say a word. He went to work for Drabble’s, which was the first job that came along. Was it then he started to go underground, living in his own caves? If I mentioned the possibility of trying something
else, looking around for another job, he’d only say
I’m not complaining, am I?
I couldn’t very well say
Yes
, but it seemed he was, in some way. I kept saying I was sorry, which must have got pretty boring for him. I
was
sorry, and yet I wasn’t, too. I feel the exact same now. How can I regret Duncan, who isn’t like any other person on this earth? When Duncan was born, Mac came to see me, and didn’t ask about the baby at all, simply said
You okay?
I guess it was terrible for him. It
was
terrible. But it was his kid, too. It wasn’t immaculate conception. Well, he took on the responsibilities, Stacey. What more do you want? After a while business picked up in the spray and flavor trade, and Jen was born, planned.

  — Well past midnight, Mac gets home. Stacey wakens and hears his key in the door. He climbs the stairs slowly, his footsteps sounding to her like those of her father, like Matthew’s footsteps on the front steps on Sundays, seventy-four years old.

  — Mac, for Christ’s sake, you’re forty-three.

But when he switches on the light in the bedroom, and stands in the doorway, Stacey cannot see that he has changed all that much in sixteen years. He is still as lean as ever, and although his auburn hair has darkened, he has lost none of it. He is still handsome to her. The main change is in the webbed lines around his eyes and on his forehead.

  — Worrying about how to support us? If I could only go away and leave him alone, take the sword off his neck. Would he want me to? No good saying he chose me and the kids. He didn’t know what he was getting himself into, just as I didn’t. Mac – let me explain. Let me tell you how it’s been with me. Can’t we ever say anything to one another to make up for the lies, the trivialities, the tiredness we never knew about until it had taken up permanent residence inside our arteries?

Hi. You’re late, Mac.

My God. Is that my fault? I had to finish up before I started home.

I didn’t mean it that way.

Well, that’s how it sounded to me.

I’m sorry. I only meant you’re late and isn’t that too bad. For
you
, for heaven’s sake, I meant.

Okay, okay, it doesn’t matter.

Doesn’t matter! That you misunderstand every single word I utter.

Oh Stacey, for God’s sake. I’m tired. Quit exaggerating.

Okay, so I’m exaggerating. It would just be nice if you knew what I meant.

  — Why am I doing it like this? If I knew what you meant, as well. Oh Mac. Talk. Please.

I’m sorry. I’m obtuse – okay? But I’m bloody tired and I don’t feel like starting one of these

I’m sorry. I didn’t mean
that

All right, all right. Let’s forget it, eh? Let’s just forget it. I’ve had about enough for one day.

  — And he has. He has. Let’s forget it, then. When we’re both dead, we’ll forget it.

Mac undresses and climbs into bed beside her.

Christ, am I ever beat.

You better get to sleep right away, then.

I’ve got to.

It’s okay, I know.

Well, I’m sorry

You don’t have to be sorry

Yeh, but you’ve been alone all week

It’s okay – I’m used to it

Look, are you sure you don’t mind?

I don’t mind. It’s not that. Look, it’s okay. Everything is all right – okay?

Yeh, I guess so. God, the traffic was terrible tonight, coming back in. Kids okay?

Yes, everything’s fine here. How was it this time?

Oh – could’ve been worse.

Tell me about it.

Nothing to tell. Same as usual.

What’s usual?

Oh, I don’t know. Same old crap. Look, are you sure you’re okay?

Yes, I’m okay

Good night, then.

Good night.

Beside her, Mac moans a little in his sleep, turns over and is quiet. Stacey is not able to sleep.

  — Damn him, snoring away so unconcernedly. I feel like giving him a sharp kick, so he’ll wake up and at least we’ll both be suffering. All right, God, don’t tell me, let me guess. I’m a mean old bitch. I know it. But I ask you, Sir, is it fair that Mac should be systematically restoring his physical and mental energy through sleep while I lie here like a bloody board? What’s that you say? You are suggesting that if I am expecting justice I am a bird-brain? You have a point there, Lord. I will have to mull that one over.

One of them cries. The games vanish. Stacey sits up in bed. Mac half wakens.

  — Which one? Duncan.